luks

Loop devices let a plain file act as a real disk — format it, encrypt it, mount it from fstab. Here's what works, and what bites back.

Destroying a 256-bit key takes milliseconds. Overwriting a terabyte takes hours. That gap is the whole story.

Hardware tokens protect your key from being copied. Paper in a safe protects it from being lost. You need both.

Full disk encryption demystified — how LUKS works, performance reality, and when you actually need it.